Thursday, June 16, 2011

Congratulations, Anna and Heather!!!

Please join me in congratulating fellow bloggers Anna Alexandrova, who will be taking up a University Lectureship in the HPS Department at Cambridge in September, and Heather Douglas who will be the (first?) Wolfe Chair in Science and Society at the University of Waterloo as of January 2012!!! (And congratulations also to Cambridge and Waterloo on their great new hires!)

Okay, two brand new Wolfe Chairs at Waterloo being filled in the same week would be one explanation. But I can't find any independent evidence of their being two chairs. I remember one being advertised, not two.

However, there is another Wolfe Chair at McGill. So is one of Fehr or Douglas actually going to McGill??

No both are going to Waterloo. According to my Waterloo contacts the department liked both candidates so much that they talked the university and Wolfe chair people into funding two different chairs at Waterloo.

It's by no means "normal" but it's not even unheard of (and not only in Canada as far as I know). Maybe the Dean "owed" the department a tenured position but they were not planning to fill it this year and the department made the case that both candidates were excellent and this would spare everyone another round of hiring in the near future. Note though that I'm just speculating. I have no insider knowledge of what actually went on in this specific case.